Best Deadlift Bar

Forum owner Jay Nolan is gathering opinions on who makes the best bar for deadlifting at Fortified Iron.

Opinions:

The Okie is hands down the best bar ever made. Every one that has ever used one at my meets loves them. The only problemis you have to go through Crain;s to get one. If I Had it to do over, I might just go with the Texas dl bar and save te hhassle and get the second best dl bar.

Okie for sumo, Texas for conventional.

Mine is an Okie Jay. I have seen the Elite Fitness dl bar and it's retty awesome as well.

the okie bar does whip like crazy... so much so that my first pull with it actually messed me up

yea definetly okie, but ivanko actually makes some good bars too

I actually think the Frantz DL bar is much better than the Okie. We had only used Okies at Iron Island until we lifted using a Frantz bar at APF Seniors one year and it was so good we immediatley ordered one when we got back from the meet. It has just as much spring, but less whip. Seems harder to bend also.

Maybe it's just my strongman upbringing, but I hate the texas bars and the jesup bars (and Ivanko especially) - the knurling is way too deep for my liking. I prefer tarnished old York bars with smoothed out knurling. They don't rip my callouses off.

I also like the whip of the older York bars. I get a good flex when squatting anything over 300, but when unweighted, straight as an arrow.

Bars feel better when they bend.

Are the special deadlift bars all narrower in diameter than standard Oly bars? In my one meet, the bar I pulled seemed narrower which helped my grip (and contributed to my PR too). I think it was an Okie.

I know the diameter of the Okie and Texas Power bar are pretty small compared with a normal bar.

This probably wont help much, as i doubt your gym will buy you a $400 bar, but i've always deadlifted on a thick (33mm?) Eurosport bar. A big black 50lb beast with fairly worn knurling, likely pretty cheap too. Did my biggest max yet with it. My girl just bought herself an Ivanko bar and what a difference! I can double-overhand almost 100 pounds more with it than the beast. The knurling is nasty, it almost feels like cheating. Hell ov a difference, but then again its going from one extreme to another. I dont find the whip bothers the lift at all, and i get some good speed on my deadlifts. Maybe its actually HELPING...

Me likey. But i'd still use the beast, just to keep my grip nice and strong, that is if some cretin hadn't recently BENT IT. How the HELL some fag bends a 1 1/4" thick, 50lb bar lifting less than 4 plates i'd like to know...